Top Row (from left): One World Coffee, raw milk, lardo, bacon. Bottom Row: beef cubes, Pub Cheddar, Cow Pie, Parmesan, Orange Cardamom Sausage

Today’s trip to Hendricks Farm yielded an impressive (and wallet-busting) array of treats), as well as an opportunity to chat at length with Bob del Grosso, who prepared both the sausage and the lardo.

I first read about lardo in Bill Buford’s Heat, and I remember salivating at his description of cured pig’s fat seasoned with rosemary and other spices. Bob’s version did not disappoint. Upon his suggestion, I tried it thinly sliced on some fresh bread, heated for a few minutes under the broiler. Fat lovers: hunt this stuff down!

The Parmesan and Pub Cheddar are old favorites, which I wrote about on an earlier visit to the farm. This was my first encounter with the cow pie, though. This bloomy rind cheese was surprisingly acidic. Had I known better, I would have thought it was chevre. Regardless, it was outstanding.

The beef cubes are for tomorrow’s stew. I was kicking myself on the drive home, when I realized that the one pound I picked up was far to little: forget about even the possibility of leftovers.

Finally, the coffee is from local roaster One Village Coffee. Evidently, they roast right down the road from the farm. This is a blend roasted especially for Hendrick’s Farm. I hope it lives up to the standards I have for the rest of their products.

The cheese store was quiet today, but that didn’t preclude me from having a transcendent moment this afternoon.

A bad first pass on the slicer left me with a piece of Prosciutto di Parma not quite pretty enough to sell to a customer.  I took a quick nibble and set it aside on a sheet of wax paper, before waiting on another shopper.  She asked what we had on sale- “anything like the Parmesan?”  I unwrapped a block of Pecorino Gran Glona that happened to be on sale, aged and exhibiting similar lactic acid crystals to the Parmigiano Regianno, but made from sheep’s milk.  I immediately had an epiphany, but had to wait until I had finished taking care of the customer.  Only after she left was I able to plane a piece of the cheese for myself, set it atop the thin, pink, almost translucent piece of prosciutto,  and then pop the combination into my mouth. It was a moment to remember.  The mellow, almost nutty flavor of the prosciutto perfectly offset the rich earthiness of the cheese, with the slight moistness of the air-cured meat balancing the dryness of the aged pecorino.  Kids, do try this at home.

(Apologizes for my failure to tote my digital camera around with me, or to even remember to use my camera phone.)

Keep up the good work, buddy.

I’m not going to lie- like everyone in this article, I’m hip to this concept of eating local foods. In that case, I may even be willing to consider Trent Hendricks to be a rock star. After all, the cheese that he’s making on his sixty-acre dairy are much more impressive than ricotta, which requires no aging.

After a visit up to the Hendricks Farm and Dairy in the far reaches of Montgomery County several weeks ago, I came home stocked with three varieties of the approximately twenty raw milk cheeses they produce. That number apparently refers to the total number of cheeses made from the milk of the ayershire cows, not the number of cheeses that are available at any given point in time.

Unlike ricotta, Hendricks’ cheeses are all aged for varying amounts of times in a room dedicated to this purpose, down the hall from the cheese-making room, and across the hall from the milking machines. Different approaches and treatments lead to very different outcomes. For example, the rind of the appropriately titled “Dirty Laundry” is washed with a solution of macerated cherries, lending the cheese an intriguingly tangy finish. Cherries are also worked into the body of the soft cheese, but the effect is more tart than sweet. Putting on my Garrett Oliver hat, I can’t help but get excited about combining the Dirty Laundry with a nice kriek lambic. What’s that? I think I hear the food nerd alarm going off somewhere very nearby.

The pub cheddar, which came coated in black wax, is sharp, but lacks the mouth-puckering assault of many ultra-aged cheddars. Instead, the cheese has an appealing complexity, mixing punch with nuance, especially when compared to one-note bludgeoners like the (inexplicably) popular Canadian Black Diamond cheddar.

Finally, the Telford Tomme, presumably made from lower-fat milk, shows a consistency similar to the cheddar, but with the most pronounced grassy flavor of the three. Lingering on the palate, the grassiness ultimately yields an unexpectedly spicy finish. Food nerds (like me, apparently) like to talk about terroir, a term taken from the wine world, to denote the specific characteristics of cheese produced in a given locale. If I had ever owned a trucker hat, I might be willing to wager it on my claim that this cheese shows something distinctively (and positively) indicative of the rolling countryside of upper Montgomery county.

You guys will have your turn soon enough.